Reid Attack on Magwood Seen as Signal in Jockeying for NRC Chief

By Katarzyna Klimasinska -
Jul 30, 2012

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
may have signaled an effort to bar Nuclear Regulatory Commission
member William Magwood from being chairman by excoriating him
over an atomic-waste site, a safety advocate said.

“Bill Magwood is one of the most unethical, prevaricating,
incompetent people I’ve dealt with,” Reid said in a July 26
interview with the Huffington Post, posted today and confirmed
by the senator’s office. “I will never forget what a
treacherous, miserable liar he is.”

Magwood was among candidates mentioned as a successor to
Gregory Jaczko, who quit as NRC chairman in May, David Lochbaum,
director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of
Concerned Scientists, said today in a phone interview. President
Barack Obama picked geologist Allison Macfarlane to fill the
remainder of Jaczko’s term, which expires in June 2013.

“The biggest consequence will be in June next year,”
Lochbaum said in discussing Reid’s comments about Magwood. “It
sounds like it’s some early posturing.”

Jaczko, a former science adviser to Reid, resigned amid
allegations from Magwood and other colleagues that he bullied
staff and humiliated female employees. Magwood also told
lawmakers in December that Jaczko verbally abused female
workers, a claim the ex-chairman denied.

‘Worry About’

Reid blamed Magwood for Jaczko’s departure. He said
Magwood, appointed by Obama in 2010, lied to him about his
position on Yucca Mountain, a proposed Nevada nuclear-waste site
Reid opposes. Magwood tried to continue work on Yucca even as he
assured Reid, “You don’t have to worry about me” on the
project, the senator told the Huffington Post.

“He’s a first-class rat,” Reid told the publication. “He
lied to me, and he had a plan. He is a tool of the nuclear
industry.”

Magwood, whose NRC term ends in June 2015, for seven years
was the Energy Department’s director of nuclear energy, making
him the government’s senior nuclear-technology official. Before
joining the department, he was manager of electric utility
research and nuclear policy at the industry-backed Edison
Electric Institute, according to his agency biography.

“And as long as I have this job, he will never be chairman
of anything that takes Senate confirmation,” Reid, whose senate
term ends after 2016, told the website.